Wednesday’s ad is for Miller High Life, from the early 19th century, I think. In this ad, there’s some pretty funny text, beginning with that it’s “First Choice Among Connoisseurs.” But “Cleanliness a certainty — the light bottle does it,” is pretty good, too.
Between 1951 and 1953, P. Ballantine and Sons Brewing Company, or simply Ballentine Beer, created a series of ads with at least thirteen different writers. They asked each one “How would you put a glass of Ballantine Ale into words?” Each author wrote a page that included reference to their beer, and in most cases not subtly. One of them was Henry Morton Robinson, who was reasonably well known in 1951, when his ad ran.
Today is the birthday of Henry Morton Robinson (September 7, 1898–January 13, 1961), who “was an American novelist, best known for A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake written with Joseph Campbell and his 1950 novel The Cardinal, which Time magazine reported was ‘The year’s most popular book, fiction or nonfiction.'”
His piece for Ballantine was done in the form of his reminiscences about how Ballantine Ale has helped him relax over the years:
If Ballantine Ale didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent it.
The tensions generated by modern life begin to lessen for me whenever I pluck a dewy-cold bottle of Ballantine Ale from the refrigerator. Anticipation mounts as I snap off the cap with its familiar three rings. There’s a promissory gurgle in the neck of the green bottle, then a swirl of full-bodied amber ale into my tilted glass. I watch the creamy collar rise to the brim — and the ritual of pouring is complete.
A sip, a swallow, a draught — according to my mood. Deep speaks to deep, as thirst and tension vanish together. Relaxed, I savor the distinctive after-tang prized by everyone who has ever tasted this hefty brew.
I lift glass and bottle to gauge my remaining measure of enjoyment. I’m prolonging, not scanting, an experience that will be repeated when I open another bottle of Ballantine Ale to be my companion at lunch or dinner.
Today in 1976, US Patent 3979527 A was issued, an invention of Derek Roy, James Laws, and John Anthony Pickett, assigned to Brewing Patents Limited, for their “Preparation Of Hop Oil.” Here’s the Abstract:
An improved method of making hop oil is described involving steam distilling the hop oil under vacuum at a temperature not exceeding 50°C. The distillate can be collected by cooling to less than -20°C. The collected distillate or hop oil extracted therefrom can be used in beer making processes to give beer having a hop character very similar to that obtained by dry hopping.
Tuesday’s ad is for Miller High Life, from 1939. In this ad, like yesterday’s ad, it’s all about the action! “Wherever there’s action — wherever people are doing things — you’ll find Miller High Life. There’s a blithe lift to this sparkling, amber brew that puts it in time with action and fun,” whatever that means.
Today in 1979, US Patent DE 2808712 A1 was issued, an invention of Simon Redl, assigned to Anton Steinecker Maschinenfabrik, for his “Plant to Manufacture Beer Wort by Hydrating Crushed Malt — Introduces Water as Unbroken Film to Avoid Aeration of Product.” Here’s the Abstract:
The installation comprises a pressure roll mill for wet crushing brewers malt into a wort mixing chamber where a hydrator introduces additional water and an agitator mixes the milled malt and water. The hydrator is designed to introduce water in the form of a continuous, film which runs down a guiding surface extending into the wort mix. The guiding surface pref. extends alongside or beneath and for the full axial length of the mill rolls. The guiding surface is a side wall of the casing which forms the chamber containing the mill rolls and the agitator. Both walls are pref. employed as guiding surfaces. Water is pref. run on to the guiding surface from an adjustable width slot at the bottom of a supply pocket. The guiding surface pref. form one edge of the slot which has a width of 0.5-5.0., (1.5-3.0) mm. The hydrator offers faster and more homogeneous mixing in of water than single exit water inspectors. Undesirable aeration of the wort is held to an absolute minimum which was not possible with spray injectors.
Today in 1910, US Patent 969224 A was issued, an invention of Ferdinand Turek, for his beer “Filter.” There’s no Abstract, although in the description it includes these claims:
This invention relates to filters and has for its object to provide an improved filter construction.
Monday’s ad is for Miller High Life, from 1939. In this ad, it looks like a scene from the beginning of a traditional English fox hunt, shot from fox level. And naturally you’d need a beer before following your highly-trained dogs around on horseback as they do the actual work of hunting the fox. I didn’t know that fox hunting was even a thing in the U.S., but apparently it’s still legal here even today (unlike in England, which banned it in 2005). But I love this in the text. “Wherever there’s action — wherever people are doing things — you’ll find Miller High Life.” So anywhere anyone is moving? So pretty much anywhere outside cemeteries and maybe mortuaries?
The 115th Session, is hosted this month by Joan Villar-i-Martí, who writes Blog Birraire. For his topic, he’s chosen The Role of Beer Books, to sum up the topic says. “I believe the importance of books for the beer culture makes them worthy of another Session.”
Here’s his full description of the topic:
The discussion at hand is “The Role of Beer Books”. Participants can talk about that first book that caught their attention, which brought them to get interested in beer; or maybe about books that helped developing their local beer scene. There’s also the bad role of books that regrettably misinform readers because their authors did not do their work properly. There are many different ways to tackle this topic.
The Session has been about books before just once, and it was about those that hadn’t already been written. I believe that their importance for the beer culture makes books worthy for another Session.
My two primary beer bookshelves today.
For me, I have to go back before I thought about beer books, and thought about just books. I loved books for as long as I can remember. I read voraciously as a child. They were a great escape from issues I had with my home life, and particularly a psychotic, alcoholic stepfather. I loved classic adventure stories — like the Howard Pyle Robin Hood, the Swiss Family Robinson and Around the World in 80 Days — but really would read just about anything. My favorite aunt (a great aunt, actually) was very encouraging about reading. She was an unusual woman, and had a degree in chemistry from Syracuse University, which was not common in the late 1910s or early 20s. She sadly never really put it too good use, but she read constantly, and usually had several books she would be reading simultaneously. She would leave them bookmarked in each room, and would read the book left in whatever room she happened to be in. I don’t know how she did it, but it was her pattern my whole life, so she had obviously worked it out so it was easy for her. About once a month, our school handed out a flier from the Scholastic Book Club, and she had graciously agreed to buy any books I wanted. To be fair they were almost always under a buck, but it was an amazing gift.
One of the last things my biological father gave me before he was out of the picture was a multivolume children’s illustrated encyclopedia. That was my introduction to the world of reference books. And I’m still obsessed with them to this day. As much as I love stories, I love non-fiction even more. There was a quote I always loved, by Desiderius Erasmus. “When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.” When I joined the military, and was on my own for the first time as a young adult, that was how I lived my life. After basic training and then my MOS school in Virginia, my permanent duty station was in New York City, where I played in an Army Band from 1978 through the fall of 1980. We got paid on the 1st and 15th of each month. Since I had no rent, no utilities to pay, no insurance premiums and my used car was paid for, my paycheck was almost all disposable. After setting some aside for college each month, the rest went to books, music and video games. Every paycheck, we’d pick a new Atari 2600 cartridge and then the rest was spent on interesting books and albums (remember this was before the age of the CD or digital music).
It was during this period of time I bought a bartender’s book of cocktails. In the back of the book there was an appendix that included four reasons to drink for each day of the year. It was that book that piqued my interest in collecting dates. It’s what led to there being a Brookston Almanac (http://brookstonalmanac.tumblr.com/), though it was actually first online as The Daily Globe around 1995. And until recently, I had more books on calendar systems, almanacs, timelines and collections of dates than I did beer books.
But the first true beer book I bought was detailed in an earlier Session, Session #46: An Unexpected Discovery, and it was Michael Jackson’s World Guide to Beer. I first arrived in New York City in the spring of that year, and began exploring the city, especially jazz clubs, museums and the theater. There was a great USO office in Times Square, and we could usually pick up leftover theater or movie tickets there for free.
We also visited bars, lots of them. Somebody told us to go to McSorley’s, and it was certainly fun. But what emerged as a favorite was a bar in the East Village, Brewsky’s Beer Bar. It was a little hole-in-the-wall on 7th Avenue, but it had, for its day, a great selection of imported beers. I think the owner was Ukranian, or something like that, and there were a lot of beers from central and eastern Europe. There were dozens of similar-tasting lagers and pilsners with enchanting labels I couldn’t read. But it was the darker beers that really stood out, simply because they were so different from what I’d grown up drinking. For example, I recall Dortmunder Union vividly as a beer with distinct flavors unlike any other I’d ever tried.
I liked most of what I tried, though at the time I was drawn to the few English ales I tried, I think because they tasted so much different to me than what I was used to drinking. I was certainly hooked. I already had a somewhat obsessive love affair going with beer, but to find out that it was so much richer and more varied than I’d realized was something of an epiphany.
I longed to know more about what I was tasting, but there was scant little information available. Happily, that changed one day during one of my post-payday trips to a bookstore, I happened upon Michael Jackson’s World Guide to Beer, which had been recently published. I almost didn’t pick it up, because the garish gold and green cover had a large Miller ad in the center. But then I spied the red triangle from Bass and flipped through it. Needless to say, I bought it on the spot. Finally, I had some context to what I’d been drinking lately and was able to organize my head around the various tastes I’d been trying so chaotically.
Looking back, it seems odd that there was so little available information on beer and, compared with today, how truly ignorant I was. And it wasn’t just me. Practically everybody I knew had little or no idea about beer. The regional and national breweries at the time made no effort to educate consumers. The other beer books I was able to find at the time made little attempt to codify or explain anything. There were plenty of breweriana books, books on collecting cans, things like that. Or trivia-themed, Abel’s Book of Beer (which has been mentioned online recently), a few by Will Anderson, etc. But Jackson’s book talked about the beer itself, what was in the bottle rather than what was on the label. That was pretty cool at the time.
Since then, of course, I’ve amassed quite a few more beer books, which I started picking up while working on my first book in 1991. Below is the original shelf I set aside for beer books.
And outgrew that one and added another next to it, but that’s now too full and place for a third will have to be found soon.
And here’s some stragglers, and a few often-consulted books, piling up until a third shelf can be found.
Today in 1893, US Patent 504610 A was issued, an invention of Andrew W. Oppmann, for his “Barrel Registering Machine.” There’s no Abstract, although in the description it includes these claims:
This invention relates to machines for registering barrels, half barrels, and kegs, the nature and objects of which will fully appear from the subjoined description when considered in connection with the accompanying drawings, in Which- Figure l is a perspective view of my new registering machine as seen arranged over an elevator, for receiving the barrels from below. Fig. 2 is a like perspective view of the same as seen for receiving the barrels through an opening in a well from a room on the same floor. Fig. 3 is a view of an office or room located above or in another part of the building having electric bells connected with the machine for the purpose of announcing the delivery and registration of barrels or kegs by the said machine.
Sunday’s ad is for Miller High Life, from 1966. In this ad, four manly men are playing cards in a den. There are snacks on the table, and plenty of Miller High Life. But three of them at least know enough to drink it out of a glass mug, while the fourth is leaning by the fireplace, can in hand. That must be while he’s out of the game.
